Denyse O'Leary says Bella is loved by all the right people

Denyse writes:

Bella is a beautiful film, and I can think of no higher praise than to say it is loved by the right people - and hated by the right people as well. Only at the very end do we discover the meaning of the title, and I will not spoil that for you.

Read the whole thing, for as is usual with Denyse, her review it is very interesting. She also talks about how the movie relates to one of her beats as a science journalists: the intelligent design controversy:

If I told you exactly how I think Bella relates to intelligent design, I would spoil critical scenes and, - worse - tempt you to read it as some kind of an allegory. So let me hint: Nina starts out assuming that life is determined in advance, and it is very limited. No one cares, and no one will ever care what she does. Therefore, she must have an abortion.

She doesn’t exactly “want” an abortion. It would be more accurate to say that she cannot imagine a future in which she did not have one. An abortion will accomplish the only goal she can imagine: set her back on the treadmill to nowhere instead of tipping her into the abyss of nothingness. And that is her future - her full stop is delayed a while.

We are not encouraged to judge Nina for her past or proposed choices, but rather to see them in the context of her limited expectations.

But Jose, the chef at Nina’s former workplace, has plunged into the abyss himself. He has emerged, knowing that life is not as Nina thinks. On the contrary, there is a design to life, and that design is much larger and more promising than we usually imagine. If we cooperate with it, we become our best selves. If we don’t, we wander, aimless and self-destructive, forever bound by limits of our own making. Jose impulsively walks away from his frantic kitchen and sets out to demonstrate that to Nina.

He senses that he is one of the few men who can truly relate to the dilemma Nina and many other pregnant single women face. His own life, like theirs, was forever altered by the outcome of a few moments of unwise choices.

As an aside, I interviewed Lisa Samson this morning about Bella: the novel that will be released along with the Bella DVD next month. I'll provide a link when my story is done.